


Even in Death

by catalyticGenesis



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, The Stolen Century, i kind of didnt mention barry at all, im sure hes fine, lup is more worried about her brother at this point, technically takes place right at the end of the stolen century and slightly into the first arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 05:33:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11799462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catalyticGenesis/pseuds/catalyticGenesis
Summary: It’s instant and yet agonizingly slow. Silverpoint poison, of course. Not the first time you've died from it, but you're about to come back. And then, you're stopped and separated from your brother for an agonizingly long time.Lup dies, and from within the umbrella, tries to remember.





	Even in Death

**Author's Note:**

> My knowledge of how much time has passed between events is shaky at best.

It’s instant and yet agonizingly slow. Silverpoint poison, of course. In your botanical cataloging of the various planets you’ve been to, Merle was the first to discover it. He didn’t die, but you did. This was an earlier loop. You died slowly, and came back about half a year later. You’d never seen Taako so excited to see you, and with a start, you had realized this was the first cycle you’d died before him.

Right now could be a setup for the same situation, except you’ve got a backup.

Part of the reason you became a lich was for your twin. You’d never tell him, but the others on the crew had told you just how lost he seemed without you. While you’d joke about the two of you being codependent, it was agonizingly true.

You’re still dying. Almost dead, almost ready to leave your body. You’re lying in Wave Echo Cave, slumped against a cave wall. Your Phoenix Fire Gauntlet (man, what a rad name) is secured inside the vault, safely hidden away from the world. No more glassed-over towns, no more flaming pillars of what was once the wielder of the gauntlet, that’s over.

Your life is over.

And suddenly, you’re freed from your dead body, rising as your lich form again. You reach down to grab your umbrastaff, but as you do, it rolls out of your reach in an unprecedented action.

It takes you a second, but you realize your mistake with horror.

That second was all the umbrastaff needed to do its intended job - absorb the power of a defeated magic user.

You’re simultaneously a magic user, and in this form, your own source of magical power. The umbrastaff has no problem absorbing your power - and, by extension, yourself.

Your last thought is that you left your twin behind - and unless he found your staff, it was for good.

~

You’re awake. This thought takes every single bit of conscious effort you’re capable of. You don’t know where you are. You don’t know what just happened. You’re not even certain who you are, though you’re certain you will figure that out.

All you know is that you’re awake, something is wrong, and that you’re missing someone.

You struggle to stay awake. Somehow, you know that if you close your eyes (not that they’re even open to begin with), if you drift off into the hazy darkness surrounding your mind, you’ll be gone, and you can’t have that, now, can you?

You need to get back.

~

You’re starting to remember. Your name is...your name is...well, you’re not quite there yet. You’re an extremely powerful magic-user, of course. You were a chef and arcanist on an impossible mission between realities. And you’re missing - you’re missing - it still eludes your grasp, but you know you’re missing someone.

Someone who’s waiting for you to come back and you have to get back to them.

~

You truly wake up when a wave of static washes over your mind and shocks you awake into reality. You can’t quite manage the energy to sit up, not yet, but the static brought back a name. Lup.

Your name is Lup Tacco. You were on the crew of the Institute of Planar Research and Expedition as the chef and arcanist, along with your twin brother. You’re an extremely powerful wizard specializing in evocation and the creator of both the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet and the umbrastaff (which, you suspect, is where you’re trapped). You’ve lived a hundred lives and died far too often, this being yet another instance of dying.

You can’t remember your brother’s name.

~

What you suspect to be many, many years later, you’re struck with both a realization and static in your mind.

You stand up, all the way, on your own two feet, for the first time in what must have been a decade.

The name of your brother is Taako. It’s been eleven years and you need to go find your dipshit of a twin because you couldn’t imagine him living more than a year without you, much less more than a decade.

~

You’re pacing around your small room when you hear something other than the waves for the first time in a decade. You hear your friends, you hear Merle and Magnus, but most importantly, you hear Taako.

“Uhh, excuse me, whichever one you are, the d... dwarf, uh, there’s a cane here to look at,” he says, his voice slightly muffled by the curtains of the umbrella.

You frown, tilting your head to the side. That’s certainly Taako, you know that, but he doesn’t sound...right. He’s smart, dangerously so. Just like you are.

But hearing him right now, he sounds almost...dazed. Like he’s not all there and you struggle to figure out what could be causing that.

While you’re considering this, you feel someone roughly grab the end of the staff. It’s Merle. A dear friend of yours, but frankly, he wasn’t going to do. You needed Taako. Even if in this dazed state, he couldn’t figure out how to free you, even if he couldn’t figure out it was you, you’d still be with him (albeit inside an umbrella), and that was enough for you.

With every bit of energy you have, you lash out. Not evocation, you don’t have enough power for even the smallest flames, but pure force. You feel Merle’s hand let go of the handle, and you hear Taako (your dear idiot brother) start yelling.

“Oh golly!” he says, loudly enough you think it’s directed at the unfortunate dwarf you flung across the room. “Let me give it a whirl. I’ll try the exact same thing that he just did.”

While that’s usually not a solid plan (oh, Merle fucked up on something? Why don’t I try the exact same thing, great plan indeed, Taako), it works because you miss him. You can feel his surprise as there’s bolts of red lighting shooting around the room (that’s yours, that’s literally part of the magic that makes up your soul, you’re amazed he hasn’t realized by now), and you can feel him searching for some kind of clever quip (because of course, whenever you’d defeat an enemy or get something new, it was a race for which one of you could come up with the best line the fastest). He doesn’t come up with anything at all, and that worries you a little.

But it’s okay.

You’re back with your brother. Maybe not in the ideal way, maybe you’re not there to embrace him and make fun of him and be there for him, but you’re together again.

It’s okay, you’re together again, and within your curtained prison, for the first time in eleven years, you relax and heave a heavy sigh of relief, and you can feel your hot tears on your cheeks.

You’re back, and he’s back, and you’re together again.

**Author's Note:**

> Taako's dialogue is taken directly from the episode, transcript from tazscripts.tumblr.com/tazscripts.
> 
> Title is from Homestuck (Volume Seven), since I listened to that while writing.
> 
> Lup's general fuzzy memory isn't from the voidfish, since that doesn't effect liches, it's from dying and being trapped inside the umbrastaff. The voidfish erasing the info about herself and later, the baby voidfish altering things again, however, is what helps bring her memory back.  
> I'd love any comments or criticisms because while this is far from my first fanfic, it's the first I've written for taz and it's troublesome getting character voices down, as always.


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